iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Daniel Pollak @danielpollak.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Such few people are fighting scientific fraud. I'm surprised how compelling Dr. David's work is when made into YouTube videos. This guy's grinding papers and posting on PubPeer left and right and then finds the time to do this?? Incredible stuff. youtu.be/3R6VsFNdqdE?...

youtu.be

Identifying Image Fraud in a Nature Neuroscience Paper

YouTube video by Sholto David

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Daniel Pollak @danielpollak.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

Was privileged to go to two consecutive conferences: @cogcompneuro.bsky.social in NYC and @neuroethology.org's International Congress for Neuroethology in Vancouver, where I presented this poster (no preprint yet, coming soon) and this extended abstract: openreview.net/pdf?id=oixbv...

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Daniel Pollak @danielpollak.bsky.social · 06/06/2026

Update: the vine has grown and is now providing shade to my front door. Also pictured: milkweed for monarch butterflies (bottom left), my fig tree (left), my curry tree (middle left), and assorted succulents (bottom right)

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Daniel Pollak @danielpollak.bsky.social · 12/05/2026

Why is github.com/calebweinreb... not in the top five tools used in systems neuroscience? #Kilosort, #DeepLabCut, #Suite2p, #CaImAn are crucial because they work flawlessly. #SNUB ...also just works and has delivered more insights into my data in less time than any of these others combined.

github.com

GitHub - calebweinreb/SNUB

Contribute to calebweinreb/SNUB development by creating an account on GitHub.

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Daniel Pollak @danielpollak.bsky.social · 13/03/2026

Abstract suggesting that some protists can use symbiosis for magnetoreception. Promising direction, seeing as there have been zero magnetoreceptors discovered outside bacteria... www.nature.com/articles/s41...

media.tenor.com

a cartoon coyote is riding a skateboard with a magnet attached to it

Alt: Literal data about how magnetoreception works

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Daniel Pollak @danielpollak.bsky.social · 01/02/2026

I'm hoping this trellis will give my doorway shade once buds break in mid-late March (fingers crossed), not to mention delicious leaves and grapes. Stay tuned. In the meantime, Los Angeles, not to be an ahole but what is going on?

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Daniel Pollak @danielpollak.bsky.social · 01/02/2026

Espaliering this vine has been an exercise in utter ignorance. And guess what? It's come back each Spring. So there's no technical or knowledge barrier keeping you from free food, shade, and aesthetics. See the current state of my vine: I cut it down to the nubs. I have no idea what I'm doing.

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Daniel Pollak @danielpollak.bsky.social · 01/02/2026

"But Daniel how do I even get a grapevine?" Do what I did. Steal a branch from an existing grapevine. In general, we should all steal more plants. (Thanks Caltech community garden!)

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Daniel Pollak @danielpollak.bsky.social · 01/02/2026

There are tons of trellis structures all over the place in residential buildings! These unadorned, trellised spaces are unfit for humans when it's hot. Why no grapes? Do people not know that grapes are wildly heat resistant? My vine has essentially ignored heatwave after heatwave.

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Daniel Pollak @danielpollak.bsky.social · 01/02/2026

Like most other people in LA county, I live in a concrete structure that becomes an oven in the summer: three walls with an opening facing West.

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Daniel Pollak @danielpollak.bsky.social · 01/02/2026

I never feel like I have something about science I'm comfortable posting. But I just realized I have too many gardening thoughts to just keep to myself. So... Why do I never see grapevines in urban LA landscapes?

Grape vine growing up a trellis over a doorway.

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Daniel Pollak @danielpollak.bsky.social · 17/11/2025

#SfN25 's hottest club is Poster X8 Tuesday Morning. This club has everything: mice hunting robotic bait, quantitative behavior modeling, chronic superior colliculus Neuropixel data, and GLM encoding/decoding, not to mention the cheap new DAQ EVERYONE's been rumbling about. See you there!

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Daniel Pollak @danielpollak.bsky.social · 08/08/2025

7/ Tools: Our open-access microdrive design—orchestrating reliable, long-term neural recordings—is freely shared (CaltechDATA repository) for the community to use and build upon.

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Daniel Pollak @danielpollak.bsky.social · 08/08/2025

6/ Takeaway: NCM isn’t sensitive to whether it’s the bird singing or hearing itself—but it is sensitive to the presence of other birds. Suggests a specialized auditory representation tuned to social environment.

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Daniel Pollak @danielpollak.bsky.social · 08/08/2025

5/ Key insights: • Behavioral context (self- vs. external song) → no change in neural encoding • Social context (alone vs. with conspecifics) → marked modulation in response strength & selectivity Plus, we observed stimulus-specific local field potential correlates in NCM.

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Daniel Pollak @danielpollak.bsky.social · 08/08/2025

4/ Our microdrive system is lightweight, durable for months, and broadly accessible—overcoming major hurdles in chronic recordings in small animals.

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Daniel Pollak @danielpollak.bsky.social · 08/08/2025

3/ We compared two contexts: • Behavioral – hearing own song vs. actively singing it • Social – listening while alone vs. in the presence of others We found that NCM responses remained consistent across behavioral contexts but were changed social listening situations.

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Daniel Pollak @danielpollak.bsky.social · 08/08/2025

2/ Why zebra finches? They’re highly vocal and social—perfect for studying how neural responses in the auditory cortex (aka caudomedial nidopallium, or NCM) change with behavioral and social context.

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Daniel Pollak @danielpollak.bsky.social · 08/08/2025

1/ Late to the game to publicize my paper with @healeylab.bsky.social ocial: Parsing social context in auditory forebrain of male zebra finches (PLOS ONE, March 19, 2025). We also developed a low-cost microdrive for long-term neural recording in freely behaving finches.

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